M is for Marvelous
April 2, 2006M is for Marvelous M restaurant at the Greenbelt
Different images fill my mind as I walk through the underbelly of Greenbelt 4 searching for the M restaurant fronting the Ayala Museum. It’s really a feast for the eyes to see exquisitely manicured gardens of acacia and bamboo, flat granite and clear serene pools where young lovers exchange seductive glances at each other. This part of Greenbelt is a forest-cum-ikebana creation that truly is a triumph of architecture in the heart of the central business district. As I take my measured steps towards the museum it strikes me, rising from the marshlands of Greenbelt. The M restaurant. It straddles the gardens of Greenbelt 4 on one side and Makati Avenue on the other; while the Ayala museum stands as a mute testament that art lives here. It’s a creation of stark contrast; from the glass and steel structure and the round woven spheres encasing the lighting, like giant boll weevil eggs shining in the dark night to the deep natural mystery of the gardens of Greenbelt. While the maitre d’ and servers prance around in their gray and black ensembles against a pure white backdrop of the interiors, the contrast is all around us as we sit on our mezzanine places anxiously waiting for the portent of contrasts to come.
And come it does one after another in swift succession. Chef Sau starts us off on a refreshing salad of Arugula and Romaine Lettuce drizzled with a Lime and Olive Oil vinaigrette and sprinkled with toasted cashew. But this is not the star here; it is the pacific scallop, lightly browned on both sides. The sweetness of the scallops large as a silver dollar shares the limelight with the contrast of the sharp and spine tingling dressing. It is browned but not burnt. The texture retains the creamy fleshiness of fresh shellfish, which breathes the sweetness of the sandy beaches of the Pacific Ocean into a happy partnership of the two flavors.
“ . . . I remember those Christmases where my Dad wouldn’t be there because he had to cook for someone else’s family . . “ words that form part of the memories of Chef Sau who comes from a long line of chefs from his father to his grandfather who all were the legendary cooks of the renowned but now long gone area of Sulipan within the boundaries of Angeles, San Fernando, Bacolor and Lubao in Pampanga. This bittersweet and sharp recounting of childhood reminiscences reveals the personality that Pampango cooks have; they were dictators of the kitchen, temperamental and autocratic
And it is this bittersweet and sharp recounting that takes us to our next appetizer. Visualize red roasted prawn, peeled, deveined and butterflied; cooked to tender perfection sitting on juliennes of unripe tart green mango and mixed with sun dried tomato and peanuts. This combination arrests your palate wanting you to pout with each mouthful but the prawn evens the flavor out to allow a relieved appreciation of the inequity of the two flavors. We await with bated breath for the next course which first appears to be a play on something truly Asian, the fish ball, but in this case, it is catfish Kofta. To the uninitiated, a kofta is a Middle Eastern recipe that is usually a meatball minced to a smooth consistency sometimes mixed with soft bread (as a binder) and milk. This is not your usual starchy affair but a delectable sphere of minced catfish; but wait, this is where the twist comes in. these are skewered on lemon grass and fried. There is simply nothing standing in the way of the lemon grass releasing its flavor right into the kofta with promises of more good food to come.
The final piece in this initial jigsaw is a classic Foie Gras, which couples handily with a sweet sauce in this case, lychee accompanied by two pieces of this exotic Chinese fruit. Once grown only in China and reserved for aristocracy, but now available worldwide, the combination is pure unbridled pleasure with the toasted and nutty accents of an evenly seared goose liver. The fresh flavor of lychee serves to highlight the creamy texture of this exotic meat taken from a goose force fed with a special mixture of feeds that let the livers swell to marketable size.
Call what you will, confidence, cockiness, outright arrogance but wherever our pilgrimages take us, we often sit and wait for the delectations of the chef but tonight, Chef Sau indulges us and allows us to choose not from a special chef’s menu but straight from the standard fare for the night. We accepted the challenge with a combination of curiosity and dread.
Chef Sau started his career as a student of culinary arts in Europe and the flavors of classic cuisine brought him down the traditional road of chef patron to many prestigious hotels, which brought him, closer back to the East for a stint in Shanghai. This landed him right into the kitchen of the great Raffles hotel in Singapore. The first selection is grilled Gindara sitting on a bed of poached Bok choi. This is drizzled with a teriyaki sauce accompanied by a generous heap of Wasabi paste strewn across the plate like a deftly manicured Japanese lawn. The presentation reveals the mastery of Chef Sau in the little nuances of Japanese cuisine particularly the proper way of spreading a little wasabi on the fish and then to dip the other side of the fish into the sauce so that it does not touch the Wasabi. It is all too easy to do this all wrong. You can overcook this delicate fish to a flaky dryness but as you would expect from a chef of this caliber, the fillet resists the resolute jab of cutlery with a tenderness that retains the freshness of the catch of the day. The sweet highlights of teriyaki serve to cushion the sting of the fiery green radish, and radiate the gentle fragrance of wasabi to bring out the flavor of fresh fish. In traditional Japanese cuisine, Wasabi is prepared by grating the fresh root against a rough surface. Some Japanese Sushi Chefs will only use a sharkskin grater. The sharkskin gives grated Wasabi a smooth, soft and aromatic finish. The splendor of Wasabi is that its fiery flavor is not long lived on the palate and subsides into an extremely pleasant, mild vegetable taste that even people normally averse to hot food will enjoy
As luck would have it, we also had our share of rice for the night. A Wild mushroom Risotto prepared as a “wet” risotto unlike the pasty traditional types that you would find in most restaurants. It takes special attention so as not to allow the rice to form a congee-like structure. The Arborio variety of rice takes well to risotto because of its higher starch content. The wild mushrooms in this dish have an unexpectedly earthy flavor and this goes well with the Romano and the creamy consistency of the risotto. It’s quite surprising to realize that this dish started among the poor working class in Italy for rice cooked in any available liquid as a filler, until its present reincarnation worldwide. The term refers more to the technique of toasting the rice with the flavor before adding the rich stock. The three elements to a good risotto are a very well flavored stock, good quality rice and time, this is the one that was well worth the time it took to prepare. It arrived wet and creamy with the fragrance of grated Romano and a healthy sprinkling of parsley for a dish fit for the nobility.
Martin Wisniewski is more than just the maitre’d at M restaurant but is also the troubleshooter that ensures that you have a well-oiled machine at M. He has had a long love affair with food as far back as the famous (or infamous) Le Taxi at the Pan Pacific complex with hospitality whiz Luc Froelich. People would come far and wide to experience this outlet, and the atmosphere it lent to the otherwise drab and dry facility;
After that, it was onto the Marketplace food court at the corner of UN Avenue and Taft which, to put it mildly, was an experiment in the mass market which still does brisk business today. His latest foray into another mother of mass production, the food court at the Enterprise, displays an acumen for food service that has brought him through many paths that lead to the M restaurant today.
Thus far, the choices traverse the entire range of cooking skills from the intuitive demands of a grill to the rapt attention demanded by the risotto but now enters the piece de resistance’ of the night, that calls on all a chefs skills, the roast breast of duck in cherry sauce. The dish demands sensitivity, an eye for detail and technique honed by years of experience. In this department Chef Sau does not let us down. Medium rare duck requires between 8 to 9 minutes in a heated oven. A timer can cover this part but handling afterward is the real secret because a breast must rest. It allows the juices to filter into all the parts of the meat to keep it tender. Three equal slices set on gem lettuce hearts drizzled with the cherry and ginger sauce and you’re on your way. Perfectly washed down with a Chilean red for your own slice of heaven. You can taste the fresh cherries, red wine and fruit juices blending well with the natural sweetness of the duck and the crisp nuttiness of the skin.
Chef Sau joins us at this point to talk about how his past has brought him inevitably to the M restaurant today right after a triumphant stint at the Nuvo right in Greenbelt. This long history of cross-cultural exposure in the hospitality industry has seasoned his skills to an unyielding mastery of his domain, the restaurant. We finish the meal with a medley of desserts starting with the signature jackfruit sans rival that is truly without rival in the sharp taste of local jackfruit blending artfully into the creams and chilled pastry of the cake. The Choconut chocolate cake is like a shot of sugar induced hysteria what with the abundance of chocolate goodness from outside and within, but the scene stealer is a seemingly innocent trio of demitasse cups filled with what turns out to be a trio of crème brulee’. Each cup is topped with a piece of what appears to be random cuts of various items, one with the traditional twist of citrus, and the color of rich crème in the tradition of the leche crema of Sulipan. Leche crema is a turbocharged version of the traditional leche flan except it has twice the sugar, twice the eggs and usually twice the fun! A second cup has a sliver of ginger on a dark brown mixture. It is a chocolate ginger crème brulee; produced out of a marriage of dark chocolate and the squeezed essence of ginger. Like a child talking about his latest discovery Chef Sau retorts, “ . . you know, we had to experiment with literally hundreds of combinations . . . . many were really no good but this one stood out!”; and this certainly arouses the tongue to a seductive sensation of succulence in the chocolate. The third cup holds a finger chili (labuyo) sitting innocently on the rim of the cup. The inclusion of chili into chocolate may have been first encountered by many in the film Chocolat where a pinch of chili brings a breathe of life to a tired old body and this does not let us down. The first taste seems innocently like any dark chocolate jelly might but as it works its way down, the capsicum oils sit on the palate like a flame warming the entire tongue and before long the body that has just been blessed with this gift of victuals feels the heat.
You would think it ends there but Chef Sau like the veritable Pampango chef who takes pride in his creations suddenly articulates, “I made a durian panacotta!” with that disarming smile and as we all nod in agreement it arrives taking along a string of looks from the other patrons ranging from amused smiles to dagger looks of abhorrence. The durian is an exotic fruit indeed that you either love or hate. It grows from a tall ominous tree and is harvested by allowing it to drop into a safety net. Protected by an spiked armor skin, it is ready to eat when the protective armor starts cracking between the seedbeds. The strong scent (or odor to some) sticks to anything it touches specially on the hands but a little water in the seed cavity produces a milky solution that serves well as a hand wash that miraculously and completely removes any reeking aromas. With the light fresh flavor of the gelatin and the single seed of the queen of fruit sitting in the center of a presentation resembling a mini water trough my rapacious attack on the fruit reveals the range of emotions that accompany any serving of durian. In my case, self-indulgence.
Wherever those memories took him it certainly becomes a reflection of the Pampango chef’s jealous zeal of concealing his culinary secrets as he summarizes his treatment of the menu at M restaurant. “. . . I change the menu monthly but I have to be there and cannot just let anybody prepare the food . . .” Very much like the cooks for the Hacenderos of the time They would just throw in ingredients that was the right amount at the right time so the same dish never tasted exactly the same, and their secrets remained that way. At other times, they would send the assistants out of the kitchen when the cook prepared the sauces and other secret dishes. But this is the real secret behind any cook’s success and a restaurant’s immortality and this is where true culinary zeal exemplified the Pampango chef. Is it this creativity that follows the success of every chef or is it the respect for traditional ingredients and technique that holds the key? No matter, it is to our good fortune that we find Chef Sau at his element, holding the keys at the M Restaurant.
M restaurant is open everyday for lunch and dinner. Major credit cards accepted and reservations are recommended.
Ultraviolet sucks good
I just went ahead and watched Ultraviolet wtihmy son today and I realized, I didn;t care about the movie really, fromthe moment you look at Mila Jovovich, she is perfect. Auiline nose, almond shaped grey eyes, thin pouting lips, Her abs, not the dinner roll type but more the smooth buns that just rise perfectly above her navel and right into the curve of her pert breasts. This is about the future when some virus spreads around the world and transforms a portion of humanity into hemophages. They roam the world with the slightest trace of caninies, and need blood to survive. WAIT, before you say not another vampire movie, they’re eyes do not turn red, nor do they fly or bite people’s necks. They are perfectly normal except for being infected with this virus.
FOr some reason, everybody has smooth skin. . . very smooth skin. Nobody sweats or bleeds in an ugly way. Everything is stylized in a perfection that puts everyon’s best view on film all the time. The (OK, I;m not finished yet)
